School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at George Mitchell School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named George Mitchell School as their first choice did not get a place: 62 put it first and 58 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Waltham Forest actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

62 first preferences for 70 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at George Mitchell School

There is no published appeal success rate for George Mitchell School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Waltham Forest as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Waltham Forest, 11.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 235 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Waltham Forest.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Waltham Forest ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

George Mitchell School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at George Mitchell School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 0.64 per place 47 first choices 74 places 2016/17 0.61 per place 43 first choices 71 places 2017/18 0.72 per place 56 first choices 78 places 2018/19 0.76 per place 85 first choices 112 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 117 first choices 114 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 132 first choices 115 places 2021/22 1.26 per place 88 first choices 70 places 2022/23 1.3 per place 96 first choices 74 places 2023/24 1.48 per place 95 first choices 64 places 2024/25 1.66 per place 106 first choices 64 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 79 first choices 72 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 62 first choices 70 places
First preferences per place at George Mitchell School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 62 first preferences for 70 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at George Mitchell School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 74 47 46 0.64
2016/17 71 43 43 0.61
2017/18 78 56 56 0.72
2018/19 112 85 85 0.76
2019/20 114 117 91 1.03
2020/21 115 132 101 1.15
2021/22 70 88 64 1.26
2022/23 74 96 66 1.3
2023/24 64 95 59 1.48
2024/25 64 106 54 1.66
2025/26 72 79 67 1.1
2026/27 70 62 58 0.89

Places offered

70

in 2026/27

Named first choice

62

238 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.5%

58 of 62

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 70 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 103096.

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,020

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

964

94.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

56

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that George Mitchell School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures George Mitchell School reported 56 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.5% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at George Mitchell School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,020 places 797 on roll 2010/11 841 places 819 on roll 2011/12 841 places 839 on roll 2012/13 869 places 869 on roll 2013/14 1,020 places 894 on roll 2014/15 1,020 places 869 on roll 2015/16 1,020 places 846 on roll 2016/17 1,020 places 861 on roll 2017/18 1,020 places 840 on roll 2018/19 1,020 places 881 on roll 2020/21 1,020 places 943 on roll 2021/22 1,020 places 972 on roll 2022/23 1,020 places 977 on roll 2023/24 1,020 places 978 on roll 2024/25 1,020 places 964 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Waltham Forest

Postcode E10 5DN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145106).

Other contested secondary schools in Waltham Forest

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.